Israel at War: Inside the Nuclear Showdown With Iran Read online

  On June 25, 1996, Iranian-backed terrorists detonated a tanker truck filled with plastic explosives in front of the Khobar Towers housing complex near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, all but destroying the nearest building. The attack brutally killed 19 American military servicemen and one Saudi citizen and wounded 372 others. This case eventually went to federal court as well. The evidence of Iran’s complicity was so damning the judge ordered the Islamic Republic of Iran to pay $253 million in damages to the families of the American victims. Yet despite this blatant act of war, the Clinton administration did not go to war against Iran.6

  Since 2001, Iranian-backed terrorists in Gaza have fired more than 12,700 rockets and mortars at the cities and towns along Israel’s southern border. Through Hamas and its other Palestinian terror allies, Iran has killed at least 44 Israelis and has physically injured more than 1,700 over the past decade through rocket attacks alone. At the same time, Iran has put the lives of a million innocent Israeli civilians—both Jews and Arabs—in danger and has caused everyone in southern Israel to battle the constant fear that at any moment of any day a rocket, missile, or mortar round could strike them or their children with only seconds of warning.7

  In the Israeli town of Sderot, located on the border with the Gaza Strip, almost half the population has fled. Nearly everyone with the financial means to move away from Sderot has done so, seeking new homes, jobs, and lives outside of rocket range. Most small business owners have left Sderot as well. Unemployment is high. Wages are low. Those who remain are overwhelmingly poor—widows, single moms and their kids, seniors living on fixed incomes, and impoverished Holocaust survivors. Many feel forgotten and alone. Thousands suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), though it’s hardly “post.” The rockets keep coming, and so do the trauma and the stress.

  Lest there be any doubt what country is ultimately responsible for all these attacks, Palestinian terror leaders routinely visit Tehran and openly meet with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has publicly praised the Iranian regime for directly helping his terrorist organization work for “victory” over Israel.8 Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar has also publicly sung the praises of Iran’s “limitless support” of Palestinian terror attacks against the Jewish State.9

  Iran also continues to provide seemingly “limitless support” to the Hezbollah terror organization in Lebanon. In 2006, Hezbollah forces attacked Israeli soldiers patrolling the border. Then they launched some four thousand rockets and missiles at Israeli civilian population centers in what became known as the Second Lebanon War. For more than one month, a million Israeli citizens were forced to live in bomb shelters or flee to the south to avoid the death and destruction raining from the skies. The Israel Defense Forces struck back hard against Hezbollah and inflicted serious damage to the terror group’s infrastructure before eventually accepting a cease-fire arrangement. Yet Israel did not launch a full-blown war of retaliation directly against Iran.

  Similarly, on December 27, 2008, the IDF launched a military blitz into Gaza—a brief war known in Israel as “Operation Cast Lead”—in an attempt to neutralize Hamas’s ability to barrage Israel with rocket attacks. The IDF offensive did significantly slow the rocket and mortar attacks but by no means stopped them completely. Indeed, in the last four years alone, the Iranian-backed terrorists in Gaza have fired more than one thousand rockets, missiles, and mortar rounds at southern Israel. In response, the IDF has retaliated against the terrorist cells and leaders in Gaza. The IDF has also targeted factories that make the rockets and warehouses stockpiling weapons. Thus far, however, Israel has not launched a full-blown war against Iran, the architect and originator of all these attacks.

  Iran’s Nuclear Threat

  However, the worst may be yet to come. Terror groups in Gaza that regularly purchase rockets, missiles, and other arms from Iran are beginning to import from Iran even larger, more powerful, more precise, and longer-range rockets and missiles, adding to the threat and the stress.

  At the same time, since the Second Lebanon War, Iran has helped Hezbollah build up an arsenal of nearly sixty-five thousand rockets and missiles, many of which are far more powerful and precise than the weapons in the Hamas arsenal. Secret cables from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv back to the State Department in Washington (exposed by WikiLeaks) reveal that the Israelis anticipate Hezbollah will fire four hundred to six hundred missiles at the Jewish State every day for at least two months should a major new war begin, including one hundred missiles a day fired directly at Tel Aviv, Israel’s most populated city.10

  Most worrisome of all, of course, is Iran’s highly advanced program to build nuclear warheads and the missiles and terror networks to deliver them. Based on Iran’s track record of religiously motivated violence against Israel, does anyone seriously believe Iran would not use nuclear weapons to annihilate the Jewish State if it had the chance? Does anyone seriously believe that if Iran’s leaders were armed with nuclear warheads, their genocidal ambitions could be contained or deterred?

  Netanyahu sees a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat to both the Jewish people and the entire world. He believes Iran must be stopped from building atomic weapons. In the shadows, therefore, Israel is doing everything it can possibly think of to slow down if not derail Iran’s bid for the Bomb, short of all-out war. Reports of Israel’s high-stakes covert war with Iran are peppered with daring, if unconfirmed, tales of espionage, sabotage, and state-of-the-art cyber warfare. But Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders are not convinced these actions will prove decisive. Iran is getting closer and closer to having the Bomb, and Israeli leaders say they are running out of time.

  As a result, Israel is steadily approaching the moment of decision, the moment so many have long feared and for which so many have long prepared: Should Israel launch a full-scale “kinetic” war involving fighter jets, submarines, precision-guided missiles, rockets, special forces, satellites, and drones to neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat and topple Iran’s fanatical leadership, and if so, when?

  “The Most Important Thing Is to Tell the Truth”

  In the middle of Israel’s last war—“Operation Cast Lead”—I was invited to participate in a conference call with then-former Prime Minister Netanyahu and a group of conservative writers. During the call, Netanyahu, who was in the midst of his campaign to once again become prime minister, briefed us on the latest developments of the war, its roots, and how it fit into the larger geopolitical picture in the Middle East. He also provided a window into why he was running for high office again and what he intended to do if he again became Israel’s premier.

  Netanyahu said he saw Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza not only as a “just war” but as a “proxy war” with radical Muslim leaders in Iran and very possibly as a prelude to a future war to stop radicals in Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

  “Our fight with Hamas,” he said, “is with terrorists who have backers in Iran and have shown the willingness to use any methods, including firing rockets on innocent civilians.” He added, “Israel is now the front line in the battle between militant Islam and the rest of the world . . . and there are enormous global consequences. . . . Israel cannot tolerate an Iranian forward position in Gaza.”11

  Israel’s “immediate goal,” Netanyahu noted, “should be removing the threat by stopping the firing and preventing the resupply of rockets and other weaponry by Hamas.” However, Netanyahu insisted that Israel’s ultimate goal—its most important long-term objective—had to be blocking Iran from becoming the dominant regional power.

  Each of us on the call had been invited to ask questions of the man who would likely be the next leader of Israel. Through the moderator, I asked what Jews, evangelical Christians, and other friends of Israel could do to help the Jewish State in its showdown with Iran, Hamas, and the forces of radical Islam.

  “The most important thing is to tell the truth,” Netanyahu replied. “There is a camp
aign of lies against us. . . . It is important to get the facts straight. The facts do count. The facts should be spoken and written loud and clear by the friends of Israel.”

  It was an intriguing answer, I thought. Netanyahu did not ask for funds. He did not ask for Americans to call the White House or their representatives in Congress and urge them to provide political support or increased military assistance for Israel. Nor did he ask for humanitarian aid, either from the U.S. government or through Jewish and Christian relief organizations. Rather, he asked us to counter the “campaign of lies” against the Jewish people, to accurately explain the truth about the enemy Israel faced, the reasons why Israel had to go to war, and the reasons why this was a “just war” using “just means.”

  And communicating these truths will be important in the next war as well. The 2009 war in Gaza, after all, was a “proxy war.” What is coming is the main event, and it is steadily drawing closer.

  In his September 27, 2012, address to the United Nations General Assembly, Prime Minister Netanyahu warned the international community that “Iran’s apocalyptic leaders” were 70 percent of the way to building nuclear warheads. He explained that Iran would be 90 percent of the way to building the Bomb by the spring of 2013 or by summer at the latest. He urged world leaders to take decisive action to neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat immediately, and he made it clear that if they did not, Israel would soon be forced to act in its own self-defense.12

  Never had Netanyahu personally been so specific with regard to the countdown to war.

  Chapter Two

  Is Israel Bluffing?

  Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s plane touched down at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on Sunday, September 23, 2012. Amid a massive cordon of security protection provided by the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI, and local and state law enforcement, the fifty-five-year-old leader stepped off the plane, flashed his trademark smile to the waiting media, and ducked into a bulletproof vehicle for the high-speed motorcade ride into the city.

  When he arrived at the tony Warwick Hotel at 65 West Fifty-Fourth Street—described by its owners as “a refined jewel in the heart of Midtown Manhattan” and an “oasis of quiet luxury” with its “European-style elegance, vintage charm, and stately ambience”—Ahmadinejad found himself greeted by hundreds of protestors.13

  “We want him to see he’s not welcome here,” said Nathan Carleton, spokesman for the group United Against Nuclear Iran, who helped organize the protestors.14

  Daniel Mariaschin, a senior executive of B’nai B’rith International, a Jewish human rights advocacy group, was also behind the protest. He said his organization was not only deeply opposed to Ahmadinejad’s visit but to the Warwick Hotel’s willingness to accept him as a guest. “No more than you would host in your home a criminal, why would you make it easy here for a rogue regime? . . . U.S. businesses are under no obligation to accept the business of any delegation to the U.N. General Assembly.”15

  The protestors, however, didn’t bother Ahmadinejad in the slightest. To the contrary, he seemed to revel in his notoriety, eager to dominate headlines in the heart of the media epicenter of the nation he has long called the “Great Satan.” Ahmadinejad had come from Tehran to deliver his eighth consecutive address to the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly. Given that he was coming to the end of his second term in the summer of 2013 and was prohibited by Iranian law from seeking a third, this was likely to be his last address—and many expected it to be his most extreme.

  Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned Ahmadinejad that incendiary speech would not be tolerated. “The secretary-general drew attention to the potentially harmful consequences of inflammatory rhetoric, counter-rhetoric, and threats from various countries in the Middle East,” noted Ban’s media office in a statement.16

  The Iranian president, however, paid no more attention to this warning than to any of the sternly worded U.N. Security Council resolutions passed over the years telling Iran to stop enriching uranium in defiance of international law. Through his translator at the Warwick Hotel, Ahmadinejad wasted no time in announcing that Israel must be “eliminated” from the earth.17 He also refused to renounce the statement of a senior Revolutionary Guard commander in Tehran who said a day earlier that Iran was considering a preemptive military strike against Israel and an attack on American military bases, and that a war with Israel could turn into World War III.18

  Was Iran truly planning a preemptive attack on Israel? Could it be a nuclear attack? Or were Iran’s leaders merely saber rattling?

  As he continued his press conference, the diminutive Iranian leader dismissed any concern over a potential Israeli preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, saying, “Fundamentally we do not take seriously the threats of the Zionists.” He added, “Iran has been around for the last seven, ten thousand years. They (the Israelis) have been occupying those territories for the last sixty to seventy years, with the support and force of the Westerners. They have no roots there in history. . . . Iran will not be damaged with foreign bombs.”19

  Was Ahmadinejad bluffing, or did he really not believe Israel was preparing to strike? One thing was certain: he was echoing the party line from Tehran.

  In July, Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran’s enemies—namely the U.S. and Israel—would not dare attack Iran.20 The Supreme Leader then vowed, as he has repeatedly for more than a decade, that Israel would soon be annihilated. “The fake Zionist (regime) will disappear from the landscape of geography,” he declared.21

  Khamenei’s complete dismissal of the possibility of an Israeli attack was quickly reiterated by Iranian defense minister General Ahmad Vahidi, who told reporters in August that Israel “definitely doesn’t have what it takes to endure Iran’s might and will” and described Israel’s talk of a preemptive strike against Iran as “a sign of weakness” by “brainless leaders” trying to divert attention away from Israel’s own domestic and international problems.22

  That same month, an official from Iran’s foreign ministry further reinforced that view. “In our calculations, we aren’t taking these claims [of an Israeli strike] very seriously because we see them as hollow and baseless,” said spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast. “Even if some officials in the illegitimate regime (Israel) want to carry out such a stupid action, there are those inside (the Israeli government) who won’t allow it because they know they would suffer very severe consequences from such an act.”23

  On September 18, Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi continued the mantra. “Israel can’t carry out an attack against such a big country, and it knows that,” Salehi said, describing Israeli talk of a preemptive strike as “empty.”24

  What the Pundits Are Saying

  Iran’s leaders were not alone in dismissing Israel’s willingness or capacity to hit Iran. Throughout 2012, a wide range of Middle East experts, pundits, and government officials in the United States, the Arab world, and even some in Israel agreed that Netanyahu was not going to order a strike against Iran—certainly not anytime soon.

  “No, I don’t see Israel striking [Iran]”—retired U.S. General Wesley Clark on September 26, 2012.25

  “We haven’t discussed war scenarios simply because we don’t expect any war. . . . The U.S. is not willing to attack Iran, and Israel won’t dare attack a strong country like Iran”—Azzam Al-Ahmed, an aide to Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas on September 19, 2012.26

  “Why Netanyahu Will Not Attack Iran”—op-ed headline in Jerusalem Post, September 13, 2012.27

  “We won’t see military action against Iran in 2012”—Israeli Kadima party leader (opposition leader) Shaul Mofaz on September 11, 2012.28

  “Four Reasons Why Israel Probably Won’t Attack Iran”—headline in the London Telegraph on August 23, 2012.29

  “New Evidence That Israel Is Bluffing about Iran”—headline in The Atlantic on August 15, 2012.30

  “Why Israel Won’t Attack Iran�
�—headline in The Diplomat magazine on August 22, 2012.31

  “Exclusive—Waters: Bibi Lying, Won’t Act without U.S.”—video of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) speaking to antiwar activists in California in March 2012.32

  “Bibi Is Bluffing”—headline in Slate magazine on March 6, 2012.33

  “Netanyahu Won’t Attack Iran”—headline in Foreign Policy magazine on March 2, 2012.34

  Are such analysts correct? Are all the warnings by top Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, merely a bluff?

  The Case against an Israeli Strike

  While many observers argued that Netanyahu would not order a strike in the near future, others added strenuously that he should not order such a strike.

  Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman are first-rate journalists and Middle East analysts. Raviv is a Washington correspondent for CBS News. Melman is an award-winning correspondent for Haaretz, the “New York Times of Israel.” Together they have coauthored three books.35 On July 11, 2012, they published an article in Tablet magazine headlined “Why Israel Won’t Bomb Iran.”36 They did not rule out the possibility of an eventual Israeli strike, but they argued it would not be soon and should not happen at all.

  They made three main points.

  There is no great urgency. Israeli intelligence estimates suggest that it would take at least another year for Iran to assemble its first bomb and still another year to attach it to a missile.

  There is much that Israel can do and is doing without actually going to war. Moreover, Israel’s intelligence agencies are enjoying an unprecedentedly strong partnership with the CIA and other Western security agencies.